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#1062 - Dave Evans - It’s Time to Rethink Your Entire Life Plan

Modern Wisdom

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  • Design Thinking For Life Wayfinding
    • Design thinking can be applied to life decisions, not just products, to help people figure out what they want.
    • The hard part is deciding what you want, not getting the thing once you know it. Transcript: Dave Evans A little tiny operation inside the design program that applies the innovation principles of design thinking to the wicked problem of designing your life at and after university. So, oh, Bill and Dave realized we’ve made all these products and all these different experiences using design thinking. Started at Stanford back in 1963. You know, and we used it at Apple in the early days. And everybody’s kind of the thing that built Silicon Valley. Hey, we could apply it to ourselves. We could design ourselves as well, you know, and that’s a real problem people have. And we gave it a try, and it seems to have worked out. Chris Williamson Do people not already try to design their life? Is that not what you do when you set a to-do list or have a calendar? Dave Evans So the word design in the field of design really means two categories. There’s what I would call craft design or engineering design. And then there’s design thinking. And so the older school, you know, so I’m an ergonomist, you know, I’m a car designer, I’m a graphic designer, you know, I’m an illustrator. So designing things, precisely figuring out exactly what this particular shape and look of something is going to be. It’s been around for a long, long, long, long time. You can get a master’s in design at Stanford and still not be very good at drawing. And there are many design schools who think that’s a moral wrong. Then there’s this design thinking idea that’s been around only for the past 50 years, which is an innovation methodology. It’s an approach to coming up with new ideas. And so when we talk, when people, I want to design my life. What they’re really saying is I want to engineer my life. I want to figure it out. I want to solve it. I want to answer it. I want to craft it. And that’s a perfectly good thing to do. We’re not saying that’s the wrong thing to do. So people have been trying to do that for a long, long time. What they’ve not been necessarily doing very well and they’re getting stuck on is finding their way. So like I walk into the career center when I’m 19 years old, back in the 70s, and I kind of, and they go, can you help me? And they go, well, sure. We got a whole building full of people. We love helping young people like you, you know? So what do you want to do? I kind of go, yep, that’s the question. I kind of go, okay, so what’s the answer? I kind of, no, that’s the question. And they go, what? I said, what do I want to do? And they go, right, what do you want to do? I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this conversation’s going nowhere. And they said, here’s how this works. You tell us what you want, then we’ll help you go get it. And I go, that’s easy. Getting stuff is easy. The hard part is figuring out what you want. They kind of go, well. That’s just on that point. You’re supposed to know. Chris Williamson Getting stuff is easy. Figuring out what you want to get is the difficult part. Yes. 100%. Dave Evans Yeah. So that’s what we help people do. So the, the, the objective of the life design lab, you asked that question, is we assist people in the formation of a conscious competency in life and vocational wayfinding. Okay. Chris Williamson Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like how do you find your way? Uh-huh. Dave Evans We have you tools to do it. Life is an improv skit. We’re improv trainers. Chris Williamson Orienteering for your life direction. Bingo. Dave Evans Yeah. Chris Williamson There’s (Time 0:00:05)
  • Prototype Your Way Forward
    • Use prototyping: try short experiments to learn what fits instead of expecting a straight career path.
    • Treat zig-zag learning as the shortest route to discovering a satisfying destination. Transcript: Dave Evans So navigation, I know where I am. I know where I’m going. I have the data about the space in between. So what your GPS does really well, I can optimize the path, preferably as straight as possible. In wicked problems where I don’t know what I’m looking for until I find it and I’m going to this very important place called the future about which we have no data because it doesn’t exist Yet, I can’t do that because I barely know where I am and I sure don’t know where I’m going and I don’t have any data about the space in between. So what am I going to do? Well, I’m going to do an empirical thing called try it. We call it prototyping. So I’m going to make this move. I’m going to go talk to Chris and see how that goes. You know, then what did I learn that day? And then, you know, I’ll go here and then I’ll go over here. It’s a very jagged pathway. I might go backward. I might have to start over again. Seems terribly inefficient, except I’m learning my way forward until finally, like, oh, that’s it. And then the destination I’m looking for finally appears and I land there. But that boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing thing, very not a straight line. (Time 0:02:56)
  • Build Multiple Meaning Engines
    • When you chase impact alone, hedge by cultivating flow, wonder, coherence, and community.
    • Build practices that produce present-moment aliveness independent of outcomes. Transcript: Dave Evans That would have told you it would have been right up front. You didn’t make a mistake. You made a move. You learned something that said, oh, continuing on the same collinear pathway would be suboptimal. I’m going to actually make an adjustment now. That’s not a mistake. It’s just a move. What do people mean when they’re talking about meaning, do you think? That’s a big one. Well, the reason we wrote this book, I’m going to get fairly direct, is that what overwhelmingly people mean when they talk to us about the meaning they’re not getting enough of, is they’re Talking about one of two things. Primarily, they’re talking about having an impact. Am I making a difference? Am I changing the world? Do I matter? Is it working? Did I make the impact that would make my life worthwhile? And so I’d say 90% of the people we’ve been talking to recently that motivated us to write this book, the one and only valid form of meaning making they’ve named is impact. And then right behind that would be fulfillment. I’m just not being fulfilled. And for most people, fulfillment means, am I getting to manifest the fullness of who I really am? Because that’s what Maslow told them fulfillment was. And the original 1943 paper that invented the hierarchy of needs, according to Abraham Maslow, the apex was self-actualization. And you attain self-actualization by literally becoming all that one can be. And if you become all that one can (Time 0:05:15)
  • Meaning Is Misframed As Impact Or Total Fulfillment
    • Most people mean impact or fulfillment when they ask for more meaning, and both are limited if framed narrowly.
    • Impact is often outside your control and fulfillment as total self-manifestation is impossible in one life. Transcript: Dave Evans That’s a big one. Well, the reason we wrote this book, I’m going to get fairly direct, is that what overwhelmingly people mean when they talk to us about the meaning they’re not getting enough of, is they’re Talking about one of two things. Primarily, they’re talking about having an impact. Am I making a difference? Am I changing the world? Do I matter? Is it working? Did I make the impact that would make my life worthwhile? And so I’d say 90% of the people we’ve been talking to recently that motivated us to write this book, the one and only valid form of meaning making they’ve named is impact. And then right behind that would be fulfillment. I’m just not being fulfilled. And for most people, fulfillment means, am I getting to manifest the fullness of who I really am? Because that’s what Maslow told them fulfillment was. And the original 1943 paper that invented the hierarchy of needs, according to Abraham Maslow, the apex was self-actualization. And you attain self-actualization by literally becoming all that one can be. And if you become all that one can be, according to Maslow, you will experience fulfillment. And we think that’s dead wrong because we’ve known for a long time in the Life Design Lab that all of us contain far more aliveness than one lifetime permits us to live out. There’s more than one of you in there. That’s the good news. So if you’ve decided you have to be all that you are and all that you are won’t even fit in one lifetime, and if I haven’t fully manifested everything that I could possibly be, then my life Is unfulfilling. I just have decided to have a policy that I have to be despondent for the rest of my life. That’s a bad choice. (Time 0:05:34)
  • Don’t Put All Meaning Eggs In One Basket
    • Diversify your ‘meaning’ baskets beyond impact to include present-moment experiences and other sources.
    • Practice accessing the flow world to get meaning that doesn’t depend on external outcomes. Transcript: Dave Evans I’ve worked hard on making an impact. You’re working on an impact. It’s not worthless by any means. But it’s also largely out of our control because some of the other 8 billion people might go off script when you’re not looking. You know, you do everything right. It may not work. Doing it right is not anywhere near enough to pull it off. So impact is, is a bet. And frankly, after you make the impact even successfully, three, two, one, well, what do you have done for us lately? Chris Williamson The half-life on impact is short. Have you ever seen, uh, Scotty Scheffler’s interview when he won the PGA masters Tour. It was from last year. Dave Evans No, but what do you have to say? Chris Williamson So he basically sits down and has this room of press, and he’s just won the thing. He’s won the big thing that he’s been working towards. Right. The special jacket or the… Yeah, the green jacket, yeah. Whatever it is. And he basically spends seven minutes talking about how fleeting and hollow this experience is. Yeah. And it’s just phenomenal. It’s one of the best things that I’ve seen in a very long time. And I’m kind of obsessed with the price that high performers pay to be somebody that everyone else admires. Oh, yeah. And to see someone using the opportunity to fillet. At the apex. Yeah, to fillet himself. He could have done that quite happily for five minutes and no one would have thought otherwise he could have called out i mean i remember that um michael jordan he got inducted into the Hall of fame 1993 and he uses the entire speech just to call out all of the people that have insulted him there’s no gratitude at all and then scotty does something similar there’s a degree Of gratitude but it’s very sanguine it’s very self-deprecating and you would, I’ll send you it once we’re finished. You absolutely love it. But he basically says the same thing. He says, you know, very quickly after this, you are going to ask me a question. So what’s next? You are going to ask me the question, and I need to go home tonight and there’s going to be diapers to be changed and trash to take out. And what are we having for dinner? And life just comes back around again. Dave Evans Oh, man. So a couple of years ago, the U.S. Olympic Committee calls and says, can you help us? I go, help you what? Chris Williamson We’re successful in the Olympics, and everyone’s got gold medalist syndrome. Dave Evans So there’s a training for after the games. There’s nothing quite as thrilling as ascending the Olympic, you know, platform, or terrifying is coming. The distance from the top of the Olympic platform to dumpster diving is terrifyingly short. Chris Williamson And much shorter than the other side. It’s long to get up there and it’s very quick to go. Dave Evans Very short on the backside, yeah. So they called up and I did a training with them. You know, there’s a group called Elite Meet, which is a volunteer organization of recently former Top Gun pilots, Rangers, Green Berets, Special Forces. Okay. People who are the absolute best in their business, can kill you at 75 ways, do not piss these people off. But most of them are lovely human beings, by the way. I am very fond of professional military. That’s a whole nother conversation. But they retire out at 42, mostly. They start at 22, do their 20 years, they’re out at 42. They’re incredibly good at what they do. The world doesn’t need them anymore. Now what? So there’s a whole group of their peers kind of going, this is going to be hard on you. We’re here to catch you. And I’ve worked with them a little bit. So yeah, absolutely. You know, killing the impact thing, you know, can be a double-edged sword. So thing one about impact is you got to get eggs in some other baskets. And the reframe there is, because that’s all done in what we call the transactional world, the get stuff done world. There’s another world we call the flow world, which is really the present moment, this thing called reality that’s happening right now that you could be experiencing in a different Way. And it’s rich with meaning-making experiences. (Time 0:07:29)
  • Celebrate The Scandal Of Particularity
    • You can’t be fully fulfilled by manifesting all potential selves; celebrate particular, partial experiences instead.
    • Befriend longing and savour brief reflections of perfection as your meaningful moments. Transcript: Dave Evans You can be entirely here in this present moment. And one thing that will help you accept that that may be true, the last big reframe is because now we can celebrate the scandal of particularity. Which usually brings up the question, what the hell is that? Chris Williamson I’ll let you interview yourself. Just keep going. Dave Evans That’s okay. Stop me anytime. No, no, no. It is your show. The scandal of particularity is originally theological, then a philosophical concept. And what it is that turns out the ultimate of anything, truth, beauty, justice, purity, is never actually experienced in reality. Only partial reflections temporarily encountered in a very specific and constrained moment in time, a particularity, are what we actually get. We’re longing for perfection, but all we get is the particular. That’s actually just the nature of reality. So rather than like, oh, you see the amazing sunset. And what actually, if you really, really attend to that amazing sunset, just as it’s over and the sun hits the horizon and you see the green flash and you, and whoa, what do you want? Wasn’t quite enough. That isn’t, it fell short. That is the fundamental nature of reality. Reality is only expressed in these particularities, all of which are partial. And it’s the fundamental nature of the human person, which is that thing you long for is how you’re made. So if you can befriend the longing, it no longer is the problem of everything’s not enough. It’s that, oh, I have a chance to participate in a sincere reflection of that perfection briefly. Celebrate the heck out of it because this is as good as it gets. (Time 0:11:05)
  • Early Encounter With Death Shaped Purpose
    • Dave shared that his father’s suicide at nine made him confront death early and value finitude.
    • This shaped his focus on living intentionally and asking ‘What’s the gift you have to give?’. Transcript: Dave Evans Have a small group of guys that have been in my support group for 51 years. I formed them in 1974. You know, I’m the eldest. I’m about turned 73, but we’re all within a year or two of each other. And so we started moving into our 70s. And at the 50th anniversary, about 18 months ago, you know, we started a conversation been going on for about two years now, but how are we going to become elders? I mean, literally I tell people, because it’s true, my next major milestone is death. How do I get there well? Now, part of that is, you know, I’ve had a lot of people. My father died of suicide when I was nine. So dealing with dead people has become important early on. I lost my beloved wife, Claudia, to cancer five years ago, though, oddly enough, another compass meant this woman has decided to sign up for the program. So I’m about to get married again. Congratulations. Thank you. Yes. But it, you know, it’s a very steep learning curve. You know, John O’Donohue, the old Celtic mystic would say that marrying another person is moving to a foreign country, whole new culture, whole new language. Or my friend, Jerry’s sister would uh, philosophy prof, there are no second marriages. There are only first marriages the second time around. So I’m doing the first marriage the third time around and the learning curve is steep, which by the way is terrific. Um, but this death thing, once you get it, but it’s going around, it’s becoming extremely popular. You know, um, it was popular earlier and now it’s popular later, but still very popular. Almost everybody’s into it. And once you really get your hands around your finitude, and burying a couple of people will help you do that, it gets you more intimate with it. So it’s very freeing. What have I got? You know, 12 years, 15 years? And it’s very clear to me that my productivity is going to plummet after my death. I mean, it’s just going to fall, it’s just going to drop off like a stone. (Time 0:32:40)
  • Transcendence Can Precede Self-Actualization
    • Self-transcendence, not self-actualization, is the deeper source of meaning and is available to anyone.
    • You don’t need to ‘be all you can be’ first to experience transcendence. Transcript: Dave Evans So, late in his life, Maslow, most people still think that the apex of the hierarchy of needs, according to Maslow, is self-actualization. It’s not. The highest level is actually self-transcendency, which he came up with very late in his life. He never published it. It’s in his personal journal notes. Others published it behind him. But interestingly enough, still, you know, eight out of 10 people think it stops it, self-actualization. And self-transcendency, if attained, creates meaning-making. So there’s a difference. And he’s still wrong because he made it hierarchical. And it turns out self-transcendency isn’t hierarchical. You don’t have to be self-actualized to get there. Self-transcendency can work for anyone, anywhere, anytime. Just get beyond yourself, whether it’s loving other people, whether it’s being selfless, whether it’s compassion, whether it’s noticing beauty and allowing it to overwhelm you. (Time 0:41:33)
  • A Simple Wonder Glasses Exercise
    • Practice ‘Put On Your Wonder Glasses’: scan normally, thank transactional thoughts, then re-scan for curiosities to explore.
    • Lean into one curious item and allow mystery to open wonder. Transcript: Chris Williamson I’m paying attention to things in a manner to look at them with a fresh set of eyes? Yeah. Dave Evans So we have a little exercise called Put On Your Wonder Glasses. So put on your wonder glasses. First of all, you know, if you can’t beat it, join it. So we recognize that we’re transactionally minded. And so we take a situation and, you know, might be a little challenging here. You know, you take a moment and you just take a look around your situation, take a look around your room, whether you’re outside, you’re inside, you’re walking the dog. And you take a quick look with your normal glasses on. And the first thing you’ll notice is what the transactional brain is going to be looking for. Like, oh, OK, this is what they’re using, a certain kind of sound proofing. And it’s the blue lights, that’s kind of interesting. You know, and I see what’s going on. You know, and probably what’ll happen is you’ll immediately come up with a to-do list. Like, you know, oh, I got to get one of those blue lights. You know, and that’s a better, that’s a better mic holder than I’ve got, you know, and I wonder if that plant deserves to be watered. You know, so your brain just comes up the to-do list. So for instance, you scan around the room, scan around the scene, and let your brain do what it naturally does. And then you say, thank you. Thank you for sharing. I’ll make that list. I’ll get back to you another time. Then you take another look and say, is there anything here that is interesting, right, that allows you to be curious? You know, you know, and I’ll notice, well, he’s got a plant there. He’s got a, you know, why is that, why do we need a plant? And then something else might be interesting, like the fact that we have all these different cameras and why are these angles important? That might be curious to me. And then I’ll say, okay, now it’s time for wonder glasses. Which of those curious things do I want to really lean into and let the mystery reveal itself? And I’m going to go with a plant. Is it real or plastic, by the way? Plastic. It’s plastic. Okay. So it’s a plastic plant. (Time 0:42:58)
  • Choose Simple Flow In Everyday Tasks
    • Choose full presence in simple tasks (simple flow) instead of always relying on high-demand tasks for flow.
    • Drop anxiety or boredom by electing to be fully attentive to the moment. Transcript: Dave Evans So flow occurs when I’m fully in the present moment, and that’s really where the flow world is existing. So let’s go where flow can be found. Thing once we posit the flow world is the place where you might enter the flow state. And then on the flow state, the way originally defined, there’s this thing called the flow channel, which is where the task at hand and my skill set are close. So my capacity and what the task demands of me are really close. So I’m neither over-skilled, and then I get bored, or I’m neither under-skilled, and then I get anxious. Chris Williamson Is this sort of proximate zone of development type stuff? Dave Evans Yeah, I’m right at my skill level. So the situation is demanding the most of me. So, and what we notice about, and that’s fine, we call that apex flow, which is where, you know, I’m really right on the ragged edge of my capability. And the reason I can drop into flow in that situation is the circumstance, i.e. The task. It takes all of me. So literally the way I put that is I have now delegated responsibility for my degree of engagement in life to the quality of the task. I need to find some task that will so demand of me my attention that I finally become fully present. Chris Williamson Which means it’s the task’s job for me to be present, not my job. It’s the flow equivalent of putting your meaning in impact. Dave Evans Bingo. So what I really want to learn how to do, we called simple flow, is I can choose to be fully attentive. I’ve got to chop these damn onions to make the soup. And then I want to really get on to is the dinner when the people come over at 7 o’clock. So it’s 5.30 now. I’ve got to get the soup going. You know, multitask. Put on a Chris Williamson, you know, YouTube while I’m listening. Do four things to make the most of it. I’m supposed to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s go all the way in on the onion chopping. Chris Williamson Oh, I thought you meant forget the onions and just watch the Chris Williams. That’s fine. Dave Evans That’d be a higher level flow, but you know, I got to, I got to get the onions done. I’m so sorry. So, so if I can follow all the way in, like, look, it’s going to be 10 minutes. You know, I’m going to do this in a nice Zen kind of way. I’m going to really appreciate the knife. I’m going to actually feel the experience. I can choose to go all in, even if my skill set far exceeds it. I can just choose to be fully present to what I’m doing. And that allows me to have this fully engaged, calmly detached experience, which is more alive. I can even try something that’s hard for me. And if I really can accept that I might make a mistake and that’s okay, then the anxiety can be dropped. (Time 0:53:14)
  • Design Your Mindset Daily
    • Design a mindset: adopt radical acceptance and availability to notice opportunities in any situation.
    • Announce agency daily by choosing why you do each activity to reclaim presence. Transcript: Chris Williamson Pay attention. Dave Evans I mean, just paying attention. So we talk about mindset a lot. The design choice of choosing into the way I’m going to be in a particular situation, you know, so if I’m only, if I’m in that staff meeting and I’m only thinking about the next thing, then I’ve designed my mindset to never be present to the present moment. So, so the, the critical design choice is how do I live in this day? How do I live in this moment? My partner, Bill, has a morning practice. Despite being an atheist, he has spiritual practices. One of them, he says two things to himself out loud every single day while shaving. And he says it’s very important that they’re out loud. I don’t shave every day, so I can’t do it. Chris Williamson It’s a good justification to shave every day. Dave Evans There you go. One is I live in the best of all possible worlds. Now, as an existential atheist, he says, look, I can also say, I live in the world. I live in the worst world. I live in the only world I notice, but actually it turns out because bias matters, I want to bias things in my favor. If I live in the best of all possible worlds, my chance of catching good things goes way up because I’ve pre-biased my attention to positive outcomes. Thing one. Thing two, everything I do today, I choose to do. So I announce my agency to my assembly. Why am I going to this darn meeting? Oh, because I scheduled it. Why am I going to the DMV? Because I chose not to file on time. And so now I’m doing this thing. So I just own my life. Chris Williamson So those two. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me. Dave Evans Yeah. I’m just, I own it. I own it. I own it. You know, so, you know, outing the victim. So that’s mindset choice. So the most important, I think the most important aspect of designing a life that includes these (Time 1:02:47)
  • Don’t Let Outcomes Define Your Decisions
    • Dave contrasts the “transactionalist” (outcome-focused) with the “flowist” (participant-focused) mindset: be fully engaged but calmly detached from control over outcomes.
    • Practicing presence both improves the chance of success and prevents wasting energy on unhelpful anxiety.
    • A common mistake high achievers make is equating decision quality with outcome — asking “What did I do wrong?” embeds harmful assumptions.
    • Questions you ask yourself carry belief systems; if your life-directing question is based on a belief you don’t endorse, it will steer you badly.
    • Reframe failures as information for participation rather than as moral proof you’re wrong. Transcript: Dave Evans My energy is in participating fully in this moment, which is, by the way, the single best way to improve the probability of the outcome. So getting really good at this present moment thing has huge side effects that work both ways. You’re not giving up transaction success by becoming more flow-oriented. What you’re giving up is wasting energy that’s not contributing. Yeah. Chris Williamson I think one of the areas I really want to get into is the mistakes that high achievers make when it comes to tying meaning to outcomes and the sort of endless rabbit holes of pursuit and Progress. What are the big mistakes that you see hard-charging, high-achievers making in your world? Dave Evans Well, the first one is that we correlate our decision-making with the outcome. So, you know, okay, try it this way. You work hard on something you really care about and it doesn’t work out. Shoot. What’s the first question most people ask themselves as soon as something doesn’t work out? Chris Williamson What did I do wrong? Bingo. Dave Evans Which makes, and by the way, questions matter. Particularly the questions you empower to judge or direct your life. Be very careful because all questions have belief systems. If it turns out the life directing question you’re currently suffering has a belief system you don’t agree with, you’re in trouble. So if the first thing I think after something goes awry is what did I do wrong? (Time 1:09:39)
  • Separate Decision Quality From Outcome
    • High-performers often conflate decision quality with outcome, leading to self-blame when things fail.
    • Ask ‘What happened?’ first, not ‘What did I do wrong?’. Transcript: Dave Evans Well, the first one is that we correlate our decision-making with the outcome. So, you know, okay, try it this way. You work hard on something you really care about and it doesn’t work out. Shoot. What’s the first question most people ask themselves as soon as something doesn’t work out? Chris Williamson What did I do wrong? Bingo. Dave Evans Which makes, and by the way, questions matter. Particularly the questions you empower to judge or direct your life. Be very careful because all questions have belief systems. If it turns out the life directing question you’re currently suffering has a belief system you don’t agree with, you’re in trouble. So if the first thing I think after something goes awry is what did I do wrong? There are two assumptions built into that question, both of which I think are dead wrong and are very dangerous. So if the first question after a mistake or a failure is what did I do wrong? What does that question already believe is true? Chris Williamson You could have done something differently and you are wrong. Dave Evans Bingo. It does believe that if I’d done everything right, it would have worked. And that the thing that didn’t get done right, which would have caused it to work, was mine. Which are both, frankly, incredibly egotistical things. I mean, it’s not true if you do it all right that it’ll work, and it’s not necessarily your mistake. So a better question than what did I do wrong, which goes right to, and if I’d done it right, it would have worked, which is wrong, it’s false. What’s the better first question? After a mistake, after a failure. Why did this happen? Just what happened? Let’s just start with back to reality. Radical acceptance. What happened? Now, if it turns out that analysis says, oh, yeah, in retrospect, I did. I mailed it in. I didn’t do the prep properly. You know, I didn’t call ahead. I didn’t get the information, you know. You know, spend all the time whatsoever talking to people about what they think about Chris Williamson. I show up here. I’m unprepared. And I shanked it. Shame on me. Okay. But that’s almost never the case. (Time 1:10:19)
  • Son’s Question Ended Workaholic Drift
    • Dave described a wake-up with his young son asking if they’d play, which exposed his workaholism.
    • That moment triggered six years of deliberate change to be more present as a father. Transcript: Dave Evans This is not okay. So I’m for the wrong thing. I’m killing it at work, but it’s killing me. You know, and then it took me six years to fix that, by the way. Um, and I finally did. Chris Williamson Learn how to decelerate. Yeah. Dave Evans I mean, and it ended up, I had to do more radical change than I realized at the time. I was trying to make minor changes and keep it all going just fine at no cost to anyone. And that just flat failed. (Time 1:17:08)
  • Achievement Feels Hollow Without A Why
    • Many elites feel hollow after success because they lost the original ‘why’ while pursuing achievement for its own sake.
    • Winning without preserved purpose often delivers fleeting satisfaction. Transcript: Chris Williamson Lots of people become objectively successful and subjectively miserable. They have objectively done the thing. They have achieved success. Subjectively, it’s not there. It doesn’t feel like they’re there. They know that they’ve done it, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve touched it. What do you lay that at the feet of? Dave Evans I wonder if they lost their why on the way, you know, Simon Sinek. Um, Because if you got there and you look, and it’s not just that it’s temporary and now what, but you look back and it feels like dust in your mouth. Then were you winning for winning’s sake? And that’s not very gratifying. So somewhere along the way, why I care about this, the substance of it, the relationship of it, the culture creation of it, whatever. You know, if I lost that, then when I get there, I literally won’t even know what the heck I’m doing here. (Time 1:19:33)
  • Join A Formative Community
    • Seek formative communities that help you ‘become’ rather than only socialize or collaborate.
    • Join groups that focus on mutual growth and hearing each other’s developing stories. Transcript: Chris Williamson Been on the show. He’s great. Dave Evans And a Zen man, a lovely guy. So we had some home running, all sat around agreeing with each other a lot. It was really a lot of, you know, and that study makes it very clear community is everything. The reason there’s a thing called formative community, it’s a technical term that we invented, is in the book, is that through this DCI program, this Distinguished Career Institute Program that I teach in at Stanford, I’m on my 10th cohort, these really thoughtful people, you know, 35 to 45 of them a year, get thrown together in a room, and then in no time at all, say, Not only is the community the best part of the program, but I’m having relationships with these people like I’ve never had before in my life. And I debrief with them collectively, and I’ll go, justify your answer. I’m not buying it. I mean, these people have formed corporate cultures and have huge professional networks. Most of them are married with happy families. How many of you, while you’re here, you’re getting calls constantly from these huge networks of relationships like, oh, we miss you. Please come home because they’re gone for a whole year at Stanford. And they go, oh, yeah, it’s a din. I kind of go, and you’re telling me that some admissions officer on this program throws you in a room with 35 yahoos you never met before, and suddenly they’re the best friends you’ve Ever had. Justify your answer. And what that conversation has revealed is what I ended up naming as formative community, which is there are three reasons to gather. One is a social gathering, a social community, get together to have a good time, which is lovely, you know, enjoy being people together. A collaborative community, let’s get together and get something done. And getting something done together with another person, you know, is really wonderful. I mean, go to a startup, go have military experience. That’s a profound experience of being a human being. But there’s another kind of gathering, which is we call formative, not just get together to have a good time, get together to get something done, get together to become better together. So if a person is a becoming, is there a place in a conversation I can enter into where what we’re doing here together is we are assisting one another in our becoming, which isn’t getting A transaction done, isn’t solving a problem. It’s allowing one another into the conversation that’s growing into the next person I want to become. So that is a gathering of intent, not content. Most of the time we get together socially around the content of we all like theater, we all like jazz, you know. So there’s this commonality of the content of what we’re doing. We’re getting together to go, you know, work on this food problem or start this company or whatever it might be. So there’s the content of our collaboration. In a formative community, like, well, you’re into climate change and I’m into Beanie Babies and she’s into modern art. Oh, you can’t help me because you don’t know my thing. No, no, no. I don’t need you to know my thing. What I need is for you to be the person who’s becoming their better selves. I want you to get more in alignment with who you’re on the way to becoming. And when that occurs, your psyche, your soul, your consciousness resonates in a way that the content of what you’re doing doesn’t matter to me, but the intent does. And when I’m with other people who are moving toward that resonance with themselves, it’s harmonic to my own. So you’re talking about climate change and I’m having an idea about oil redistribution. You know, it turns out you being you enables me to be me. So that’s what a formative community does. And there’s a certain kind of conversation they can have. (Time 1:25:56)
  • Use Obsession, Then Let It Cool
    • Lean into healthy obsessions while they last, then let them cool so new passions can arise.
    • Treat intense periods as particularities to fully experience, not permanent identities. Transcript: Chris Williamson So model the rise, not the result is the lesson. What did you do when you were at my stage? And what would you do knowing that that was your frame? Even for super smart and balanced people that have reflected about it a lot, they still go, well, the most important thing is family. It’s like, fuck you, dude. Look at what you did when you were 25. Took a flamethrower to the candle. Okay. What would you do? I would do the same thing. I’d just make sure I slept six hours a night because I slept four hours a night and that really damaged my health and that put me back by a little while. And now I’ve got to do fucking atherosclerosis or whatever the fuck it is. So, okay. That’s cool. That’s interesting. Dave Evans Let me jump in on your obsession piece and reframe it a little bit. I could suggest that we could categorize that as a particular invitation to celebrate the scandal of particularity. (Time 1:39:08)